Sangria Nights
by evoluering
Summary: Kory is having a difficult time emotionally and who else is there to comfort her than Dick.


Kory stared absentmindedly at her remarkably strong sangria, observing as the legs slowly tumbled down the glass, mimicking the atmosphere. Slow and lackadaisical. With arms crossed on the table and her head laid atop them, she looked on as the rooftop terrace lights reflected in the glass, creating a second moon which rippled in the scarlet liquid. The sounds of the live band playing in the downstairs bar drifted up and saturated the air around her.

Unsurprisingly, the alcohol had begun to take effect which meant that her usually adept responses were failing her and the only things permeating her concentration were the flat notes of the tune. So when the song transitioned into an acoustic rendition of a Frankie Valli song that Gar had shown her previously, she felt a spark of irritation. Feeling as if it were a mocking mirror to her melancholic mood. She listened on as the tenor voice sang of yearning and amorous desire and felt her annoyance rise with each following lyric.

Despite everything around her imploring her to relax, Kory could find no such relief. The events of the past few weeks constantly running a relay in her mind. Black shadows passing one worrying thought to another, again and again. The events with Rachel and her family, dealing with her absent identity and processing a myriad of emotions, some of which were only being made worse by the current love song. Safe to say that her sanity was being stretched relatively thin.

She had previously been grateful for her inhumanely high internal temperature which meant that she was alone in this open space (thanks to the frosty Chicago weather). However, now she could do nothing but hyperfixate on each and every one of her issues with nothing to distract her. With each tendril of anxiety expanding, she felt her heartbeat thud twice as hard in her chest coupled with the crippling swell of fear. Struggling to slow her rapidly rising panic, she lifted her head and took a deep breath in an effort to calm down and all she saw was sky.

And the sky stared back.

Filled with gleaming stars reflecting against each other, it oddly gave her a sense of comfort. As if they were calling to her, a connection she requited but couldn't quite explain why. She took another breath and mulled over whatever lay in the vast expanse that was space. The wonder coating her mind like stardust.

'You've been gone for a while.'

Dick's voice pierced through the heady cloud currently enveloping her, his surprise entrance causing her head to snap towards him, spiking up her heart rate.

She surveyed him through hooded eyes as his silhouette became illuminated by the overhead lights, the glare of the bulbs causing the honey highlights to dance through the dark waves in his hair.

He slumped into the seat across from her with a deflated sigh and flashed her a tentative smile. She already knew the question he was going to pose by the change on his face and knew she absolutely was not ready to answer it. Not honestly at least.

'Are you okay?' His smile had faded and he looked at her with intense and anxious eyes.

'I-' She faltered with a sharp exhale. She wanted to answer honestly but not really knowing how to balance her feelings with her pride. 'I don't know.'

He stared at her for a moment longer, his brows furrowing together. 'What do you mean you don't know?'

'I mean just that. I don't know.' She replied. 'All of this- it's so much. I want to enjoy this time, you know? We're all okay, I s-should be happy. But everything we've been through and everything we've still got to...it's s-so much to think about. It's too much to think about.' She winced when she heard the slight slur in her voice. Irked that her altered state was betraying her desire to conceal her vulnerability, and was instead throwing any glimpse of pride to the wind.

Dick's face had morphed into a full on frown at this point, scanning her face with impotent concern. 'Look, I know this is tough but we'll figure it out. We're in this together.'

His words were met with an indignant snort before Kory turned her head away from him to stare at the glimmering skyline of the Chicago night. 'I wonder if you realise how ironic that sounds.'

Dick felt a flash of irritation then, one he knew he had no right to feel. But it was promptly followed a deep shame, shame that he wished he would have felt earlier and maybe if he had, he would have been too ashamed of these exact consequences to leave in the first place. He knew she had every right to call him out on his bullshit but it didn't hurt any less to have her do it; especially when he felt he was doing the best he could.

He swallowed the negative emotions and tried instead to focus on how she might be feeling. It was made easier to know that most her issues mirrored his own internal turmoil. Trying to process a missing identity, the trauma of what they'd been through, along with many other things. Only her identity issues were so much deeper, so deep that they were literally out of this world. He got that it was all relative but with how much she'd been there for him in the past few weeks, it was up to him to finally step up.

'Hey.' He whispered gently, placing a hand placed on top of hers, causing her to turn back to him. 'I know I've let you down before. I'm sorry. It's stupid of me at this point to try and deny that I care about you. I do care about you. All of you. It just- it took me a while to get to the conclusion that I could care about you and be around you at the same time.' He admitted.

'Now it's time to tell me what _you_ mean.' Kory responded pointedly, assessing him to such an extent that he'd never felt a stronger urge to scuffle out of the situation as quick as he could. He couldn't remember a time he felt more uncomfortable, even with all the difficult situations he'd found himself in with Bruce Wayne as a guardian.

'It's just that I never thought I would be in a position that I would - that I even could - care about the people around me the way that I do about you guys. It just, I don't know, startled me is all. I was scared that I would mess it up. It was easier to disappoint you guys once rather than to stick around and keep disappointing you.' He admitted, feeling oddly emotionally lighter despite his trepidation.

Kory shifted her eyes to the table and stared at it so long that Dick thought she wasn't going to answer. But then she moved her view back to his pensive, brown orbs before gripping the hand on top of hers with a squeeze then swiftly letting go. The small but tender gesture caused his heart to go into overdrive which was only made worse by her following words.

'Thank you for being honest with me.' She finally acknowledged, lifting her head backwards once more to gaze at the stars. 'I care about you too. More than you know.'

'More than I know?' He repeated incredulously, completely caught off guard by her reply. 'What is that supposed to mean?'

Kory did not respond and despite her common sense being compromised by the pools of alcohol that were still swimming through her system, she knew that it was not time to let the depth of her feelings be known. Especially with someone who seemed unlikely to be explicit with their own emotions.

So, instead of replying, Kory stood and purposefully made her way to the edge of the terrace, leaning over the railings and peering at the busy street below.

Dick was hot on her heels, the irrational fear of her stumbling over the edge plaguing his thoughts in spite of his knowledge of her expert agility. He caught up quickly and stood facing her, still reeling from her semi-confession but alert, in case she really did go over the railings.

'Kory, what do you mean?' He asked touching her arm, the urgency for her response seeped through his voice against his own wishes.

'It doesn't matter.'

'It does matter. Please.'

There is such a prolonged silence that Dick thought she wouldn't give him an answer and he feared she would walk out of here, forget about this and he would never hear what she had say.

Eventually, Kory turned, parallel to him and stepped closer, the aura around them changed completely thanks to the spark in her eye.

Shifting to something electric and magnetic.

Dick swallowed the boulder in his throat, suddenly feeling like _he_ was the one who was intoxicated after only 2 beers. Completely inebriated by her.

Kory leaned forward, enthralling him by the swipe of her tongue on her bottom lip. The craving to capture it between his own lips engulfed Dick and he fought to shake it off.

'What do you think it means, Dick?' Her voice had dropped an octave, sending prickles of heat rippling across his skin.

He attempted to clear his throat before answering, redundantly hoping it would also clear his head. 'I'm sure I asked you first, Kory.'

But Kory moved closer, muddling his brain even further, with their chests now touching, his heart was beating so fast he was positive he would go into cardiac arrest very soon.

'This is your MO, isn't it? Avoid talking about your emotions by deflecting then bridging the distraction with…' Again, she moved closer. Lifting her hands to slide across his shoulders and sift through his hair.

It took a colossal amount of strength for Dick to hold his eyelids back from fluttering closed, her fingers doing things to the back of his neck that had him wishing they were alone in a hotel room, not with his surrogate sister and 2 teens downstairs. His hands lifted to her waist in an attempt to achor himself but the feel of her under his hands only made things worse.

Flashbacks to the last time they were alone in a motel room flooded his mind. The feel of her skin on his, his weight crushing her on the soft surface of the mattress, _her_ weight on top of _him_ sliding across his lap. Dick tried desperately to filter through his thoughts to get back to the coherent part of his cognition and found she was right.

Anytime they had been intimate, he'd been too scared to process the fear he felt from their connection and instead used sex as a way out or had, as per the last time, literally run away. This time it was his responsibility to lead by way of example in order to get what he wanted.

'Now I'm not trying to say that you're wrong but you did just thank me for being open and honest so how right can you be? Maybe I've changed.' Dick attempted to be lighthearted, despite not feeling that way whatsoever. 'Don't you think I deserve _some_ honesty from you?'

Much to his delight, Kory leaned her head on his shoulder and let out a breathy chuckle. Though the intensity of the situation hadn't necessarily lessened, the tension had somewhat depreciated.

'I guess you're right, as much as I don't want to admit it.' Kory relented, pulling back so she could look him in the eye. 'I feel something here, Dick. Something deep between us but I want to know I'm not the only one who feels it, that I'm not crazy and imagining things.' The shimmer in her eyes validating her confession, leaving Dick breathless with shock.

The idea of Kory feeling a fraction of what he felt for her sent his heart melting and his soul soaring out of his body. As short as the time was that he'd known her, Kory had turned him upside down and inside out. She had made him deal with things he didn't even know he needed to deal with. Her light had been so exuberant that it had reflected on him, allowing him to exist as the moon to her sun. It was no wonder that he fell so hard so quickly.

As she spoke, it was clear that Dick had hidden this well. Unsure as to why really. Fear of hurting her, of her hurting him, of them hurting each other. Who knew what excuse his brain had rationalised his emotional constipation with this time.

However, with Kory here now, vulnerable and honest, he felt every emotion he'd tried to repress flood to the surface, completely overwhelming him and terrifying him at the same time. His hands tightened on her waist pulling her closer to him so he could rest his forehead on hers, the action causing her breath to hitch in her throat.

'Kory I- of course you're not imagining things.' He spoke through his fear, determined to be as bare with her as she had been with him. 'How could I not feel it? You push me to be better, being with you gives me a sense of peace that no one else ever has. I'm in awe of you every single moment of every day. I'm sorry that I've made you doubt it but it's all new and honestly terrifying. But I do feel this Kory, whatever it is and I want to see where it goes.'

Kory's eyes had softened considerably by the end of his declaration, completely moved by his words. Catching them both off guard she leaned forward and pressed her lips to his as if her body responded to the words before her brain did. Both of their arms tightening around each other in an effort to get as close as possible.

'Hey you guys are missing it, Gar and Donna are going to do Kara-OH! Whoops.'

Dick and Kory immediately broke apart to see a very nonplussed and very discomforted Rachel.

'Nevermind, you guys are clearly busy,' She muttered before scuttling her way back down the stairs.

The two adults shared a glance, smiling with slight embarrassment before Dick held out a hand. 'Shall we?'

Kory responded by slipping her hand into his, threading her fingers through his own before pulling him in the direction of the stairs.

Both of their hearts fuller than when they'd come up there.


End file.
